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Here's an interesting blog article entitled "The trouble with aikido" by Wayne Muromoto listing some of his thoughts regarding aikido based on his past experiences in the art.

From the article: "One person in my circle surmised, 'Well, I think the problem here is Ueshiba Morihei himself (the founder of aikido).' He explained: a lot of people see videos and illustrated techniques of Ueshiba as an old man throwing people around with a flick of his wrist, and they think they're Ueshiba. They're not. Ueshiba spent decades and decades refining his concept of aiki theory to a point where he could do that."

Wayne's writings are always a good window into budo subjects. As a friend and colleague, I find that he's motivated to help anyone that's searching and trying their best to travel "on the budo path" to find their way. He's also got a great dog that loves to share with everyone also... :- )

Wayne's writings are always a good window into budo subjects. As a friend and colleague, I find that he's motivated to help anyone that's searching and trying their best to travel "on the budo path" to find their way. He's also got a great dog that loves to share with everyone also... :- )

Still owes me a couple of copies of Furyu though - I miss that magazine, it was beautiful.

Why is the existence of aiki-divebunnies and the brainwashed sensei who "throw" them remarkable anymore? Particularly by someone who doesn't do Aikido, but has been somewhat adjacent to it for many years?

Probably its just fluff. He needed to make a blog post on something, figured, "eh well I can bust on Aikido, haven't done that in awhile."

Why is the existence of aiki-divebunnies and the brainwashed sensei who "throw" them remarkable anymore? Particularly by someone who doesn't do Aikido, but has been somewhat adjacent to it for many years?

Probably its just fluff. He needed to make a blog post on something, figured, "eh well I can bust on Aikido, haven't done that in awhile."

In that sense, was it ever remarkable? Minoru Mochizuki commented on much the same thing back in the 1950's...

Still the fact that it's so prevalent (and such a problem) today makes this, IMO, entirely relevant. Especially most people probably think that he's talking about the other guys.

Not very prevalent in Shodokan (Tomiki),Yoseikan, Iwama-ryu and Yoshinkan. It's really mainly the Aikikai and Ki Society that has this problem. Frankly, if you focus so much on the philosophical aspect of Aikido, you are gonna run into this problem eventually. Not everyone is there for the martial art, but rather for the martial art. You can't really understand the philosophy without training, but not everyone realizes or even cares that in order to truly understand the Aiki, you must master the art as a budo first. This is why you have folks that only understand a bit of the philosophies, but none of the techniques and skills.

I'm a firm believer in the basics and the power of the skills. Without good technique, no one will believe you anyhow. O-sensei arrived at his revelations through hard training, and all the other famed masters gained prominence from their Aikido, not their speeches. If O-sensei could only talk of Aiki, but couldn't show it to the people that challenged him, then he would've been forever labelled as "the crazy old man that trains on the mountain". It is because of his divine techniques that caused so much attention to be placed on him, and thus the art grew larger than himself alone.

This kind of Aikido isn't really true Aikido, and will not help to spread O-sensei's message. I would love to see these Aikibunnies go up against some of Shioda's or Tomiki's students. Maybe that'll teach them to train more and talk less

Not very prevalent in Shodokan (Tomiki),Yoseikan, Iwama-ryu and Yoshinkan. It's really mainly the Aikikai and Ki Society that has this problem. Frankly, if you focus so much on the philosophical aspect of Aikido, you are gonna run into this problem eventually.

Itīs intresting that this post comes just a few posts after

Quote:

Christopher Li wrote:

In that sense, was it ever remarkable? Minoru Mochizuki commented on much the same thing back in the 1950's...

Still the fact that it's so prevalent (and such a problem) today makes this, IMO, entirely relevant. Especially most people probably think that he's talking about the other guys.

I don't quite understand what you mean Peter, is it that I got it wrong somehow?

I don't mean to diss Aikikai or Ki Society, especially when there's so many powerful masters in there (does not promote a long life). However, especially with large organizations, you are going to have some improperly trained and over-ranked dojocho's out there, and the problem is when they try to show their "Aikido", and people thinks this is true Aikido.

I am worried about the condition of the art, as most traditional martial arts communities are. The modern world really only promote budo as combat sports, and so schools that don't compete like traditional Aikido and many asian arts is gonna have problems with quality ensurance and student recruitment. I don't want to break O-sensei's order of forbidding competition, but I don't see any other way to ensure that the sensei's are all up to par...